Why I Don't Have a Facebook

...I count myself among those who are often very critical of Facebook. To be clear, I do not dislike Facebook as a company and I don't dislike the broad-stroke services it provides. For hundreds of millions of people, Facebook is an amazing product that helps them keep in touch with friends and family, plan events, play social games and plenty more. It brings the world closer together, there's no question.

For me personally, however, it's just awful.

The constant trivial updates, the recycled posts, the event invitations from people I haven't spoken to in 15 years, the app invitations, the game invitations, the fact that other people can check me into places and tag me in photos that appear on my page automatically... it gets infuriating.

Privacy settings help, of course, but then every time a new feature is added, users have to tweak their settings to block it. Most of the time, I'm not even aware new features roll out until I get some awful email notification about something that someone else posted on my wall. Then I have to log in, block the new feature and disable email notifications for another half-dozen list items.